Reddit reviews 2312

The Apocalypse Codex - Charles Stross

Existence - David Brin

2312 - Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 2312 covers some of these themes, if anyone is interested.

That's more difficult than it sounds, here's a few ideas:

• Culture Series by Iain M. Banks
  
• Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds
  
• The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke
  
• 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
  

2312, the novel this was taken from, was published last year.

2312 quite possibly has the weirdest distribution of votes I've ever seen on amazon. It's a balance across the board.

http://www.amazon.com/2312-Kim-Stanley-Robinson/product-reviews/0316098124/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_see_all_top?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

I just picked this up the other day in a used bookstore and it's pretty good: http://www.amazon.com/2312-Kim-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0316098124

> That would in all likelyhood require an A.I. to drive them (given that they'd essentially be building stuff from scratch and they'd need to use the local resources available to build that stuff and also to fuel themselves, because you do require some form of energy to travel in space, though at that point, we could have some fairly exotic engines available to us).

Well it wouldn't have to be a conscious AI. When you break the problem down you're talking about a lot of separate programs that we're quite capable of making now. For example you would need collision avoidance (self-driving cars), material identification (I could write this with the right equipment to play with), 3d printing schematics (no problem), etc. With funding these problems could be solved today. It wouldn't be cheap though haha.

>I still think carrier ships would be a better solution, because it does not need any infrastructure in place and it wouldn't be too terrible in terms of cost with space elevators.

Not having to carry so much fuel would be really helpful. That's the point. A big limitation with approaching C is that you have to accelerate your fuel. And you wouldn't necessarily have to worry about acceleration if it were gradual enough. Max each boost out at 3g's or whatever the max for humans is.

>Just recently, some chaps at NASA (arguably) proved that a propellant-free engine could generate thrust, basically by using radiation to reflect it around metal containers (I forgot the actual name of it, unfortunately). That would require nothing more than just available energy which could be acquired with very efficient solar panels and nuclear fusion.

This has yet to be replicated. I really hope it is though!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vacuum_plasma_thruster

> The issue remains - no matter how fast you are moving, you are still moving slower than light. And we are talking many light-years of distance here. Also, as I previously mentioned, accelerate too fast and you have issues with people dieing from the effects of acceleration itself.

True! But 20 years beats 1000. 20 years is doable. 1000 seems like too much risk exposure to me. Again though we could send robot incubators and wet-nurses to seed a suitable planet with humans.

Most that have already been mentioned (Railsea, Hydrogen Sonata...)

and 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

I love these books. I'm really looking forward to reading 2312, where it sounds like he explores a lot of these ideas again.

"2312". Everyone should read Kim Stanley Robinson's "2312". Now!

Read 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Great read about a future where humans have colonized the solar system.
http://www.amazon.com/2312-Kim-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0316098124